The invention relates to a belt bucket elevator for conveying bulk material with a driven endless belt, which is circulated via drums arranged on a bucket elevator head and on a bucket elevator base, and with at least one row of buckets, each of which is individually fixed to the belt and each of which has a base, a back wall, lateral walls, and a front wall.
A belt bucket elevator with the above features is known from DE 201 13 181 U1. With this belt bucket elevator, as well as with other belt bucket elevators known from the state of the art (see for example DE 200 15 552 U1), the individual buckets are attached at their back walls spaced from one another on the circulating belt, whereby the belt has a greater width than the buckets, in order, for example to make accessible at least one outer edge of the belt for an associated belt misalignment monitoring device.
These types of known belt bucket elevators, however, have the disadvantage that bulk material particles can penetrate between the belt and the back wall of the bucket when bulk material is supplied to the buckets in the area of the bucket elevator head and fall into the further opening intermediate spaces between the belt and the back wall of the bucket during circulation via the drums, and here, in particular, while the belt is circulating with the buckets attached thereto, can be jammed via the bucket elevator base or can be crushed by occurring forces, whereby damage to the belt and/or the bucket attachments can occur. In addition, high forces produced in this manner act on the attachment of the bucket to the belt. These risks increase in particular with increasing fragment size of the conveyed bulk material.
A belt bucket elevator with a row of buckets arranged on the belt in a close sequence is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,333,561. Groups of buckets are formed, each with a lowermost bucket having a closed based and further buckets arranged in columns above it, each having an open base. The bases of the individual buckets, respectively, run above the upper edge of the respective lower bucket, so that spacing is provided between the individual bucket attachments. As a result, the bucket is narrower than the width of the belt, so that the outer edges of the belt are exposed.
A bucket elevator with buckets attached to lateral traction means and closely arranged to one another in succession is further known from DE 1 199 184 A. The individual buckets have bases curved in half-cylinder shapes, as well as, respectively, a resilient front wall that slides on the half-cylindrical base of a preceding bucket, such that the mutual overlapping of the bucket also is maintained during circulation via a drum.